That every child who wants might learn to dance - theological elements of joy

Does willing the good for all mask demanding that all conform to our particular concepts of the good?

Before she married, Polly Miller Cooey, my mother, was an accomplished dancer. During the late forties, when I was about three years old, she began to teach dancing and baton twirling. She traveled throughout rural north Georgia, holding classes in the public schools as an itinerant dancing teacher. She charged a dollar per student per hour for classes in ballet, tap dancing, and acrobatics. For those who wanted private lessons she charged two dollars for half an hour. For baton twirling she charged fifty cents for half-hour classes. Every spring she held a recital, and all the students performed.

My mother believed that every child who wanted lessons should have them and that every child, no matter how poor, should be encouraged to want them. She never let lack of talent exclude a potential pupil. She reasoned that knowing how to dance and actually performing gave one confidence in public, no matter how clumsy and graceless the performance. She also choreographed elaborate productions, my most vivid memory being her production of the "Nutcracker Suite," performed in the sweltering presummer heat of rural Georgia. She spun fantasies of fairies and elves like no one I have ever known since, and she lured even the most cynical little boy and girl into participating in her illusions. I grew up pirouetting, tapping, tumbling, whirling, and twirling to all kinds of music, while immersed in frothy nets, satins, taffetas, laces, tassels, and feathers. I grew up surrounded by children, some of whom could leap through the air like gazelles and whirl like dervishes; others lumbered and flopped about like beached whales, with big toothy grins on their faces.

Most of these children came from lower middle class, working class, and rural families. Until the sixties, all were white. The working class and rural kids often came from large families with more than one child wanting lessons. With some exceptions, their parents worked as farmers, mechanics, clerical and secretarial staff at Lockheed, factory workers in Atlanta, school teachers, and support staff for Dobbins Air Force Base. Though most came from families with two parents, some of them, including me and my sister and my brother, were reared by single working mothers. Contrary to popular nostalgia about "stay-at-home morns" in the fifties, most of the mothers, whether with their husbands or without them, worked outside the home. Even at a dollar an hour, once a week, most parents could hardly afford to pay for one child, never mind two or more. So my mother and the other mothers worked out a barter system, trading home grown produce, transportation, hair care, and an array of other services in exchange for lessons.

The most elaborate example of this system was Ola Thomas and her four children. Ola was married to an independent truck driver who was often out of work. Ola herself worked as a seamstress on the assembly line for the Lovable Brassiere Company in Atlanta. Ola wanted dancing for all four children and baton twirling for three of them; she further wanted private lessons as well as classes. My mother and she worked out a deal whereby Ola fed my sister and me one night a week, supplied us with "seconds" in undergarments, and on occasion made me and my sister absolutely beautiful party dresses from undergarment taffeta and satin out of remnants. In exchange, Ola's children received both private and class lessons in dancing and baton, and Ola also made many of the costumes for mother's recitals. Without such a barter system there would have been far fewer, sometimes very talented, students taking lessons.

My mother and the mothers of her students understood that children needed confidence and that this confidence could be acquired through bodily discipline and practice. They knew well this confidence was much more important than talent. They also valued the experience of enjoying one's physicality for its own sake and sharing that joy through performance with one another and an audience of doting parents. So my mother inspired confidence in gawky children and spread joy like an epidemic across north Georgia for about two decades. Some of her students grew up, prospered, and brought their children to her for lessons - still at a dollar an hour and so forth. And my mother would work out payment with anybody, in some cases just plain giving lessons away - when so-and-so got laid off at Lockheed, was ill and had to quit work, or was wiped out by flood or drought. We ourselves had, mostly, a succession of extremely lean years.

My mother was not wild about the poverty, but she loved her work with a passion I used to suspect was reserved only for her work, to the exclusion of the rest of us. Now, looking back, I think, so what if it was! So what if she loved her work as much as life itself. Her work was one long sustained act of extraordinary generosity; in her imaginary world, every child who wished for it might learn to dance. And all of this work took place against a backdrop of rural poverty, economic instability for working class and lower middle class people, and the personal family tragedy of my father's alcoholism.